As mobile devices become more and more popular, the range and scope of the content that is being delivered to mobile devices is rapidly increasing. Initial applications included the transmission of voice and data to mobile devices, although the data was generally restricted to text data. More recently, it has become more popular to also send larger quantities of data including music files, and even more recently images or video files to mobile devices or among mobile devices. For example, mobile devices are now being used more and more to browse the internet, send still images, and send or view moving images, including portions of or full television programs or movies and the like.
The delivery of these more intensive types of data is typically achieved by one of two methods. The first method is streaming data, audio or video, in which the streaming data is sent to/retrieved by the mobile device in “real-time” and the audio or video file is played on the mobile device as it is received and without storage of the streaming data as a whole. In some cases, the played portions of the audio or video stream may also be erased immediately after being played. The second method is the delivery of the content in a complete file that can later be played and replayed by the end user. This method is sometimes referred to as “pod casting”.
Streaming data has a drawback in that the mobile device user must watch the streaming data immediately upon selecting the streaming data on the phone. Both streaming data and podcast formats generally do not give the user the option to customize the format of the data set sent (such as audio only, video only, or the like). In a similar vein, both streaming data and podcast formats generally rely on a player designed for a particular format of streaming data or podcast. This can be particularly difficult if the user wishes to view data that has been saved in different formats and may require different reader software. This results in a burden on the memory in the mobile device, which reduces mobile device performance.